


This Inexplicable Emotion

by mutalune



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley is Stressed, M/M, adam is the only middleschooler who has their shit together, and he also has his shit together moreso than two beings older than time, aziraphale is bad at confrontation and this bites him in the ass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-13 22:56:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19260847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutalune/pseuds/mutalune
Summary: It starts with an angel we all know and love being kidnapped by a stealthy group of devout (and horribly misled, but also just horrible in general) occultists, and it ends with True Love’s Kiss.





	This Inexplicable Emotion

**Author's Note:**

> i finished good omens in two days and then i read the book and wow all i'm In Love. so good. 
> 
> this was me trying a new kind of writing style, + i didn't want to overthink it too much so i made a deal with myself: i could only post this and get feedback if i finished it in a single weekend. this was both to get me back into writing at all (Deadlines work for me Unfortunately) and to kick my butt in gear (again, deadlines work for me and sometimes you gotta be harsh with yourself.) 
> 
> so this 1) has little if any editing 2) was written in a fast frenzy over the course of 48 hours and 3) was fun to write!! the goal was mainly to write something in a Fun Narrative Voice and to get the same anticlimatic kind of vibe that was Aziraphale&Crowley's part in Good Omens lol
> 
> i hope you enjoy it half as much as i enjoyed writing it - this is super experimental for me, so please let me know what you think! and if you want to chat about it at all, i'm at dissatisfied-starlight on tumblr and would WELCOME the opportunity to gush over the series~ 
> 
> happy monday, all!

Since the beginning of time, there’s been a specific emotion that languages haven’t quite figured out a word for just yet. It’s adjacent to secondhand embarrassment and semi-related to righteous pride, exasperation, and ridicule. It’s the kind of emotion that people only feel in a particularly specific type of situations.

The following situations are non-exhaustive examples of This Particularly Specific Feeling;

  * __A girl, despite being informed by Facebook, her best friends, and her second grade teacher that a boy she like-likes already has a girlfriend, walks up to him. She struts as if she has a feather in her cap, or perhaps even a full peacock, even as the boy in question loudly talks about Nora, his light and whole life and maybe his future wife. She struts like there is no possible outcome except the one she wants swooning and falling into her arms, forgetting about anyone else. This girl’s closest and dearest friend, with a pained grimace, says, “What an idiot,” while the others around her shake their heads commiseratingly.__


  * __Someone from afar places their hand on a wall that had recently been painted a vibrant shade of chartreuse. This individual storms to the front desk and starts yelling, waving their wet and vivaciously colored hand around. The woman at the register was already clearly miserable before this individual decided to ruin her day, and with a great, heaving sigh, slowly points at the “Wet Paint! Do Not Touch!” signs plastered not three feet away from where this individual’s stupid accident occurred. The individual scrubs a hand over their face, clearly forgetting about the paint. As the unnamed, loud individual flushes red underneath their newly painted face, and the woman at the register continues to be criminally underpaid for this nonsense, a Mr. Jim Jameson shakes his head, turns back to his newspaper, and mutters, “What an idiot.”__



And, the example at hand:

  * __A few demons decide that it’s unfair that a Certain Someone got off scot-free after averting what would have been Their Most Greatest and Spectacular Triumph. Not that demons tend to be fair, or experience fairness, or even try to, but really it’s The Principle of the Thing. They think up a rather “Ingenious” plan, if they say so themselves, and somehow their fearless leader gets said plan up and off the ground with very few hitches. It involves an Old Forbidden Ritual and Many Delicate Sigils and Smelly Potent Herbs and, most importantly, an angel that could best be described as “a cross between a dandelion, a tea cozy, and at least three doilies.”__



Here, readers, is where an observing third party would say, with feeling, “What an idiot.” That declaration is what brings us to the tale at hand, because rarely has there been a story that embodies This Inexplicable Emotion quite as well.

It starts with an angel we all know and love being kidnapped by a stealthy group of devout (and horribly misled, but also just horrible in general) occultists, and it ends with True Love’s Kiss. Now friends - there will be quite a bit between the two events. If you were going to take a bathroom break or get a cup of tea, now would be the time.

We’ll wait.

**

Aziraphale is, at his core, a simple being. He likes when problems are black-and-white: a clear right and a clear wrong, a clear resolution either way. He stresses when issues are grey and purple and distinctly not black-and-white, but after his obligatory panic and stress and anxiety and _more_ _stress_ , he eventually gets with it and handles the situation at hand to the best of his abilities in what he thinks and will claim is the most practical manner possible. He likes his tea plain with just a smidge of honey, his pastries sweet and flaky, and his books untarnished and engaging. He prefers cream to off-white, gold to silver, and red wine over white (unless it’s a particularly good Moscato, of course.)

He enjoys walking in cheerful, bright weather, and he would sooner curl up with a book and some cocoa then go galavanting out in the rain and cold.

He likes Earth and humans and the smell of old books and the feeling of blankets fresh out of the dryer -

(Most of all, he likes his demon to be happy and laughing and even more most of all: at his side.

But all that can really go without saying.) 

All of this is to say that Aziraphale really does his best to cause as little trouble as possible. He doesn’t enjoy complicated messes (his demon exempting) or causing trouble (unless it’s for a really, really good cause), so most of the time, he will go along with an uncomfortable situation until he gets an opportunity to wiggle out of it. It’s worked rather well for over six thousand years, and he has no plans to change this for at least another four thousand.

Well. Maybe three and a half. But only if Crowley really makes a fuss about it, which is unlikely since Crowley is almost as good at avoidance as he is.

This brings us to Aziraphale’s current predicament: at the “mercy” of Some Very Important Demons. The men assured him that they were working for demons that are Really Quite Important and Strong multiple times since coercing him to follow them to a warehouse in Wales. For it being an abandoned warehouse in Wales, it is rather cozy - assuming you can get past the dank corners filled with some unnameable slime and the beady-eyed rats that keep running by. Assuming you can ignore the traditional definition of cozy and replace it with “well, this is almost tolerable.”

That being said: it isn’t cozy even in that sense. Aziraphale wants to be charitable considering how much effort the poor dears went to, but this is perhaps the worst kidnapping he’s experienced in six thousand years. Not worst as “most torturous” or “most evil”, but worst as in “most boring” and “most poorly executed” and “oh god something wet touched my foot what IS that.” Why, if their target had been someone less sympathetic than Aziraphable, he would think they wouldn’t have been able to catch them at all!

Just their luck that Aziraphale has such a weak spine when the world isn’t on the line.

“Excuse me?” Aziraphale asks. They pay him no mind, even as he moves to scrape his foot across the paint they had so painstakingly splattered around his feet. He clears his throat. “Excuse me? Come now, surely there’s no need for - for - I’m not really sure what it is you’re doing, I’m afraid. What are you doing?”

“Shaddup - pansy, now. “

“Now really, is name-calling necessary?”

“I wuzzn’t talkin’ to you, pansy’s next ingredient.” The demon with a sour and pasty-looking poison dart frog attached to her skull holds her hand out, and one of the humans who isn’t cowering too horribly drops a heavy jar into it. The jar is tossed, glass and all, into a cauldron of all things.

A cauldron. And Crowley accuses _him_ of being old-fashioned.

That being said, it seems rather new-age-y to not bother with measurements or with taking ingredients out of their respective containers. Very with-the-flow and spontaneous, which isn’t usually in line with Pagans’ long-standing love affair with grandstanding and rituals. This would be more in line with those ecologically friendly witches Aziraphale had, while doing Crowley a favor, inadvertently tempted into bombing a branch office of an oil company.

Those were “free spirits” - or, at least, the closest to free spirits that Aziraphale had ever met. They were quite sweet when you got down to it, even if they didn’t seem particularly remorseful about the damages and injuries they had caused. Crowley had been impressed with the mayhem he had (again, inadvertently) caused.

Aziraphale would hesitate to say that he’s unimpressed with his kidnappers, because that doesn’t seem like a very nice thing to say. But as he watches them toss all manner of items into a bubbling cauldron without noticing he isn’t imprisoned, he’ll admit, at least to himself, that he’s _disappointed_. Heaven could do a better job of kidnapping him, and they’re not exactly known for their ability to conduct any act of subterfuge.

(Angels are notoriously bad at lying and recognizing lies. This is the only reason why Aziraphale, despite his own lackluster lying abilities, was able to stay above any suspicion of fraternizing with the enemy for nigh-on six thousand years.)

He would think after helping to avert an apocalypse he would warrant a little more consideration - not that he did all that much, really, it would be vanity to claim otherwise. 

But really. He was hoping he would get some (as Crowley would say) “street cred” after rebelling (ever so politely) against Heaven.

Clearly not. What a shame.

“Excuse me,” He repeats again. “But I think this is rather absurd, don’t you? Why don’t we all go our separate ways - You pulled me from a rather interesting novel, and I’d like to finish that sooner rather than later, you know, because there’s a new show at the theater I’m seeing later in the week, and really it’s not to my taste to try focusing on two stories at once. I like to give them my full attention, you understand, so I really think this is a spectacular opportunity to let me go before I have to take my leave myself.“

“You hear that?” One of the braver worshippers snickers, nudging their companion. “Like he can get out of that circle. Our Great, Immutable Lord Orobas painted it himself, and this f - “

“Shaddup,” the demon who must be their Great, Immutable Lord Orobas says boredly. He is seated at the opposite end of the warehouse, and he appears to be picking some debris out from underneath his nails. WIthout looking up, he says, “Angel, do you fffffully understand the position you’re in? I fffffink you’re missing the severity of the situation.”

“Orobas, is it? I’ve heard that name before, but I’m afraid I can’t remember from where. Could you, Orobas - is that how you say that? Pronounce it? - perhaps, you could explain the situation? I’m still not quite, ah, certain why I’m here? Perhaps you could clarify?”

Orobas snorts. It sounds familiar, but Aziraphale is preoccupied with slowly tiptoeing his way to the edge of the circle “Binding him into place.” It’s the equivalent of a loose rope draped across his shoulders - a weight that he will have to dispense with to leave, but not enough to keep him in place if he wanted to leave. He slides closer to the edge, wanting to be as close to freedom as possible if things start to go south. He’s not a fast runner, but he would bet he’s at least a little more imaginative than this lot and could find a way out with some elbow grease.  

“You’re here ‘cuz a your boyfriend. Hell’s a little… Peeved at him.”

“Boyfriend?” Aziraphale sputters. “Well, I mean - I wouldn’t say - we didn’t exactly - “ He coughs and says, coolly, “I’m not quite sure what you mean. 

“Sure,” Orobas says blandly. He stands up and walks over to the cauldron, staring at it disinterestedly. It’s started to bubble an alarming shade of red, and he pointedly tucks his hands behind his back while observing whatever reaction is taking place. “Regardless. You’re here cuz he’s a prick and we’d like some payback for him fffffinkin’ he can ffffffffuck up our chance for glory wiffffout any kinda punishment.”

“So what part, exactly, do I play in all of this revenge nonsense? Crowley is nowhere to be found, obviously, and it’s been quite a few hours. I can’t imagine I’m being effective bait or anything of the like, so - ”

“You’re an ingredient. Ffffinal Ingredient, meet Crawly-Crowley-whatever that ffffucker’s calling himself these days’ Punishment.”

Without further ado, he picks up the cauldron (which is almost comical, seeing as it’s easily five times larger than he is wide) and proceeds to toss the contents all over Aziraphale. 

From there, things get rather hazy for Aziraphale. The last coherent thought he has is, “Oh bother - that’s going to stain.” 

This is another opportunity for any particularly engaged reader to say, “What an idiot.” In reference to Orobas, of course. The time to judge Aziraphale will come too, but for now, we’re judging Orobas and feeling holier-than-thou towards Orobas. 

Orobas, who, despite being one of the original Fallen - who, despite being a Prince of Hell who should, realistically, have more sense than demons such as Hastur and Ligur - who, despite all evidence to the contrary, apparently doesn’t know better than to piss off a Principality, of all things.

Orobas is an idiot, and he should be ashamed. Because he is an idiot, though, he is unaware of this fact, and instead, looks at Aziraphale and thinks for three seconds that he has accomplished what he set out to do. They’re a good three seconds for him. His sin of choice has always been Sloth, so he rarely feels anything outside of apathy and exhaustion and indolence. The Pride of a job well done - that’s a rare sin for him to indulge in, but here, he thinks he will. 

For three seconds, he basks in that pride, and wonders if Mara (the demon with the sickly-looking poison dart frog) would want to help him kill the worshippers lingering around. It would be fun, he thinks.

Then Aziraphale stalks forward and grabs him by the neck. Orobas doesn’t have time to wonder what went wrong before he’s being quite forcefully discorporated. So forcefully, in fact, that there is nothing left but a smudge of gristle against the floor.

Mara meets the same fate.

The details are rather frightful, so reader, we won’t linger on what happens here. All we’ll say is that this is behavior unbefitting of an angel, but more startlingly, it’s behavior that even demons would struggle to perform. Certain types of humans would look at the carnage wrecked and shrug while smoking a cigarette.

“War is hell, kids,” This type of human would say behind a glass of ice cold scotch. They would sip at it and look into the distance blankly, reliving horrors that no one Above or Below could have created. Humanity is its own worst enemy, in the end.

That isn’t to say that demons and angels can’t be formidable adversaries in their own right. And the mixture of both - well.

If there was ever evidence that for as much as Aziraphale had been a good influence on Crowley, Crowley had been as much of a bad influence on Aziraphale, this would be it. For an Aziraphale at the beginning of time would have been held back by his devotion to God and Heaven, even when under the influence of a strange concoction created by demonic influence.

Orders had been orders, after all, and angels rarely do anything without being explicitly told to do so. Aziraphale would have caused a massacre only if instructed to do so, and certainly not because some liquid was trying to convince him to hurt everything he’s ever cared for. For Aziraphale at the beginning of time, though loving humanity and all who falls under that umbrella in a general sense, loved God more than anything.

Whether Aziraphale is aware of it or not, his love has grown and shifted and evolved over many millennia. Under the haze of Orobas’s Extra Strength Forced Aggression (And Most Particularly Against Your Loved Ones) Potion (patent pending) with thousands of years of (quiet, but certainly there) disloyalty to Heaven and giving into (minor, here and there) temptations added to the mix, Aziraphale never really had a chance but to give in.

And that, readers, is what we would call: A Consequence of Giving In To Peer Pressure and Trying that Thing Your Parents Call A Gateway Drug Because One Time Won’t Cause Any Trouble At All Really I Mean It Don’t You Trust Me? There are rewards for having free will, and Aziraphale and Crowley have experienced those many times over - the consequences are less frequent, but far more damaging than one would think. Or maybe as damaging as one would think considering that these are extremely powerful beings with nearly limitless powers.

It’s like giving a five-year-old a machine gun that fires off nuclear missiles instead of bullets five seconds after they learned what “good” and “bad” really mean. Then telling them that, technically speaking, they can use that nuclear-powered machine gun however they want to, as no one can really stop them from doing what they want.

Obviously, there will be some consequences to doing such a thing. God intended for that to be the case. Free will and choice is important because there are consequences.

In this case, the consequence of choice is the follow: Aziraphale, due to Orobas’s poor attempt at getting vengeance on Crowley, is on a bloody murder spree, and the only being who could stop him is in a different country and just realized something is amiss when a particular lunch table was left empty for far longer than it should have been.

**

Crowley, like Aziraphale, thinks of himself as a simple kind of creature. He likes sun-warmed rocks and cool black clothes that soak up heat better than rocks. He likes to mess with hot-headed humans, he dislikes goody-two-shoes (Aziraphale doesn’t count - the angel rebels as much as he can without Falling, which is a bloody art if you ask him), and he, too, would prefer that situations are black-and-white with easy choices to pick from.

Making choices in general gives him a bit of - saying anxiety would make him sound much more human than he’d care to admit, but he definitely doesn’t enjoy having to make decisions. He prefers a simple existence - cause some mayhem, get reprimanded by Aziraphale, apologize to Aziraphale by way of food-drink-books-etc., wash rinse repeat. He dislikes when Aziraphale is mad at him but he does so enjoy irritating him.

He likes his toast barely toasted, his coffee iced, and his plants in tip-top condition. He prefers black to white, gold to silver, and red wine over white  (unless it’s a particularly good Moscato, of course.)

He would give up a limb for warm, tropical weather and Aziraphale’s hot cocoa.

He likes Earth and humans and the smell of old books and curling up on a cozy, plush couch.

(And most of all, he likes his angel more than he should, and he really likes when his angel smiles. And more most of all, he likes when his angel is by his side and they’re facing down the world together.

It goes without saying, of course.)

All of this is to say that, obviously, Crowley would much prefer if Above and Below stopped making his life difficult and complicated and complex. He’d be pretty happy it if at least one would stop, because at least then he wouldn’t have to try to find out which one was causing him grief currently.

And what a bout of grief it was.

Here are the facts, as Crowley is aware:

  * Aziraphale would never miss lunch willingly.


  * Aziraphale is not at lunch currently, despite them making the plans only a few hours earlier.


  * Aziraphale might have gotten caught up in a book, except the ranking of What Aziraphale Likes places food at least two positions above books - meaning, it is unlikely he would forget about lunch no matter how engrossing a book is.


  * Aziraphale is not at lunch currently, and he has likely been kidnapped by Above or Below, because none of his responsibilities would keep him from dining out.



None of these facts make Crowley feel particularly good. He tries to refrain from tugging at his hair, before remembering that he’s a demon and they don’t have to worry about items like “restraint.” He proceeds to tear out chunks of his hair and regrow it immediately after so as to have more hair to tear out.

In the midst of him pacing up and down the street in front of Aziraphale’s shop is right about when Something shifts and Crowley goes from distraught to extremely, warily bewildered.

There aren’t many things that can happen and through forces unknown make all of the world stand up and go, “Huh” - the last time this occurred, the first chocolate chip cookie had been invented and most of existence went, “Huh” and tried to hold back their strange craving for something they hadn’t experienced yet.

Unbeknownst to Crowley, this current “Huh” moment is due to his best friend going, as the kids would say, absolutely apeshit over in Wales. The world is not a fan of angels going against their nature in such a catastrophic way, and were Earth human-sized and human-shaped, it would be trembling in its figurative boots.

Or actual boots. Human-sized and human-shaped Earth could probably pull off boots better than most.

Regardless, Crowley can tell that something has changed and gone wonky, but he still can’t exactly _do_ anything about those matters considering the fact he still doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. It’s not an ideal situation to be in - clueless, planless, and, thanks to those two, still angel-less. He tears at his hair some more but that doesn’t make anything better.

It’s a good thing Crowley wasn’t in charge of - well, anything, really. The first sign of any strife and he’d be stressing himself into an early grave. It’s a minor miracle that he has made it six thousand years without being discorporated due to an extremely, unbelievably high blood pressure level.

It’s also a good thing that Crowley has the luck of the devil. So to speak. His phone rings, and he picks it up with a, “I’m in the middle of a CRISIS HERE - “

“Hey Crowley,” A bright voice comes down the line. “‘Ziraphale gave me your number last time we talked in case of an emergency. I think he thought I’d need you, like if I was in an emergency or summat like that, you know? But turns out it’s him who’s all caught up in an emergency.”

“Adam?”

“Duh.”

Adam has continued to be quite the charming young man. His vocabulary is mostly “Duh,” considering he’s a thirteen-year-old antichrist with powers that have been growing dangerously close to omnipotence.

Crowley tries not to think about how much power is being wielded by a hormone-ridden child and how Adam could, with a thought, destroy existence itself. It makes it easier to get through the day that way.

Adam continues, “Hey, so, I’m pretty sure something’s going on with ‘Ziraphale in Wales. I’m gonna magic the place into your head ‘cause I can’t pronounce it, and you should probably book it. Feels pretty good - well and by good I mean it’s making the antichrist part of my brain happy but that means it must feel pretty damn - “ Someone in the background yells. “Sorry, darn bad.”

Crowley wants to complain, but he’s too busy getting a doubleshot of Antichrist Brain Waves (™) to put together anything more coherent than “Nrg.”

“It’s pretty wild, yeah? Who knew ‘Ziraphale had it in’m. Good luck mate.”

“Nrk.”

Adam’s laughter cut off abruptly as the phone call ends. Crowley tries to get his thoughts back in order after getting a half-occult half-teenager all-antichrist’s information dump shoved to the front of his mind.

Then he needs a few more minutes to pick out the relevant information, because Adam is a t _eenager_ who has the attention span of a fruit fly.

The Bentley gets him to Aziraphale’s location in almost no time flat. Well, there is some time. Considering he’s a country-ish away. But Crowley wants to be there, so the Bentley does its damnedest to get him there. The speedometer changes from “0-340” to “Very Fast - Lightspeed” and Crowley actually uses his seatbelt for the first time in decades.

(There is a possibility that the Bentley likes Aziraphale almost as much as Crowley does. Just a possibility. No one could really find out, since the Bentley is, after all, a car and therefore doesn’t have a voice to use to express its own opinions.

Aziraphale always is perfectly comfortable within the Bentley, though - the seat tilted to a perfect angle, the temperature kept cool no matter how hot it gets outside, and the cushions fluffed to perfection.)

From the outside, the warehouse is a warehouse. It looks like what you’d imagine an abandoned warehouse would look like, and as the outside of the warehouse matters little, we won’t dwell too long on that bit.

Inside is a different story, Crowley finds out quickly.

He whistles lowly at the carnage. He can’t take two steps without something squishing under his feet. Even for a demon, this is unpleasant to look at.

“Well now. Well. Well, really. I mean. Well.” He hems and haws, trying to find a reason to not have to keep walking further in. It really is unpleasant. “Well. Buck up or fuck up, I suppose.”

The walk through is, as expected, horribly uncomfortable. Gristle and pus and a truly absurd amount of gore squelch under his feet, and he nearly slips half a dozen time. He spends so much time watching his feet to make sure he doesn’t take a nasty (oh so nasty) tumble.

That might be why he doesn’t notice Aziraphale until the angel is right in front of him and reaching out.

“Hey!” Crowley grins, glad his eyes are covered by his glasses. Aziraphale doesn’t need to see how freaked out he is. “Angel, you missed lunch. Whaddya say to getting the hell - er, outta here? Not exactly your scene now, is it?” 

Aziraphale just looks at him. He makes quite a picture, with his tartan-patterned outfit, slippers, and blood up to his elbows. Scratch that - blood up to and far past his elbows. Were Crowley a demon with a faint heart, he would’ve left at the first glimpse of such a strange dichotomy.

He’s not exactly a demon with a strong heart, though, so he does take a hesitant step back. Aziraphale follows with a step forward, still reaching out to him. Crowley takes another step back - this one full of trepidation and a significant amount of unease. Aziraphale follows again,  then is suddenly stalking forward.

Readers, if you have ever come across a large predator - a bear, a shark, Satan himself - you would understand perhaps a fraction of what Crowley was feeling as Aziraphale zeroed in on him. A fraction of a fraction, perhaps.

What Orobas forgot, and what Crowley could never forget, is that Aziraphale is a Principality.

It’s not common knowledge, per se, that Principalities are scarily vicious. Principalities are guardians, protectors - they have more protectiveness and intensity than any of the other ranks of angels. It’s not common knowledge, per se, that Principalities were the highest percentage of angels that Fell with Lucifer or have Fallen since due to this intensity.

It’s not common knowledge, but these are facts regardless of who is aware of them and who is not. Crowley is aware, yes, but until this exact moment, he has never had any reason to consciously reflect on Aziraphale’s inherent nature. He has always thought Aziraphale was worth knowing because of his passion and the vicious core that’s underneath all of his soft fluff. It was part of who he is, so Crowley appreciated it and appreciated that it brought him entertainment and a damn good drinking partner.

Having a feral Principality staring him down and charging him, though - it doesn’t matter how much he knows this is Aziraphale, his best friend. Just like if you found yourself face-to-face with a starving wolf, readers, it’s unlikely you would be able to do anything but frantically run away if it started chasing. Crowley is equally helpless to ignore his instincts.

And just as you would be completely, embarrassingly incapable of outrunning that slobbering, starving wolf, Crowley is completely, embarrassingly incapable of getting more than five steps before Aziraphale is on him and pinning him to the ground.

**

Here’s what would’ve happened had Orobas’s plan worked out perfectly:

_Aziraphale would have acted been dazed but relatively normal until coming in contact with Crowley, the demon who Orobas et al. believed was his boyfriend/husband/etc. He would likely have left the warehouse with a bewildered, on-a-different-planet kind of look, and upon his late arrival to his lunch appointment with Crowley, he would go into a frenzy and kill the demon. He would do it in a public area with many witnesses, forcing Heaven to send enforcers who would erase the situation from the bystanders’ minds while taking care of Aziraphale. “Taking care of” in this case meaning killing him, of course, since Aziraphale would also be trying to kill the other angels. It would look like the mercy killing of a heavenly asset that had gone native from being down with the pathetic mortals for too long, and no one would really care past a halfhearted “Ah, what a shame.”_

If you’re a technical kind of person, here’s how this would look like were the world a computer:

      _For (int i = 0; i++; i = number of creatures in the same room as Aziraphale){_

_if(i = living && i.isLovedBy(Aziraphale)){_

_Aziraphale.kill(i);_

_}_

_Aziraphale.frenzy();_

_}_

The key to Orobas’s plan was the pansies, really. Pansies are meant to represent dear, beloved, head-over-heels love. Before you ask: Roses are for passionate, fiery love. Pansies are for something a little more delicate.

These things are more finicky than you’d think, and more finicky than most would be aware of. Anathema is one of few beings who can successfully work spells and rituals such as this one. Orobas is not.

To be fair, anyone who saw Aziraphale could be forgiven for thinking he loves his most dear ones gently. It’s easy to assume that his easy-going demeanor and his genial disposition meant he loves the way most angels do, with a great deal of distance and only under great duress. He doesn’t come across as intimidating or intense at all, and this is a generally accepted fact regarding Heaven’s agent on Earth. Orobas had actually done a fairly good job in researching the angel to ensure he wasn’t being hasty with his plan.

Unfortunately, most demons are unaware of Aziraphale being, as mentioned previously, a Principality. A Guardian. Underneath the layers of tartan and beige, a protective beast slumbers, waiting to be roused for battle.

Orobas assumed that Aziraphale only loved God, and Heaven, and Crowley - all enemies that he would be thrilled to have out of the way or inconvenienced by Aziraphale going mad. Had Aziraphale been any other angel, Orobas would’ve succeeded.

Unfortunately for him, Aziraphale is an overachiever. He’s the kind of overachiever who doesn’t mean to ruin the exam’s curve but still does, and he doesn’t even realize he was the one to do it. When God said, “Love thy neighbor,” most angels would “love” their neighbor just enough to get by. They wouldn’t actively smite anyone unless provoked, but they didn’t try very hard to be nice or kind, and it didn’t really count as “love,” if we’re being fair. For as much as angels are meant to be righteous beings of power and sacrality, it’s fairly obvious to anyone who knows them that angels tend to think themselves rather spectacular in comparison to the mortals and the filth of Below.  

Always the exception to the rule, Aziraphale.

When God said, “Love thy neighbor,” Aziraphale spent millennia learning how to do exactly that. He fell in love with humans as easy as narcoleptics fell asleep. How could he not? They are, at their core, capable of remarkable feats - good and bad. How could he not love them when they are so blessedly interesting?

This was already rather above-and-beyond in comparison to the other angels, but then Aziraphale did something quite remarkable himself.

He didn’t fall in love with Crowley so much as he _learned_ how to love Crowley. It took a few millennia, but he eventually began to love Crowley as much as he loved the humans and then so much moreso. In doing so, he found himself reluctant to not love other demons. If Crowley could be so loveable, after all, how could Aziraphale think they were all bad? They had once been his siblings too, after all.

This all being said: Demons got lumped into the same category of love that humans and angels he never knew personally fall into. For any other angel, this would be “love,” - the bare minimum affectation of affection to get out of being formally reprimanded. For Aziraphale, this is love like what pansies represent. Fragile, but true enough.

Hence the gristle and gore.

It’s almost sweet, if it didn’t involve so many deaths. Or any death at all, really. The death part of this event rather ruins how nice it is that Aziraphale has so much love to give.

**

Crowley doesn’t have a magic solution to get himself out of Aziraphale’s grasp. He doesn’t have any insight into what happened in the warehouse before he arrived or why he’s somehow alive when clearly Aziraphale didn’t show any mercy in eliminating anyone else he came across. He has a large, clearly mad angel pinning him to the ground and no idea if he’s in the clear or if Aziraphale’s just deciding how to best squash him.

He’s definitely looking at Crowley like he’s a particularly troublesome bug. Like he can’t decide if he should run and get his shoe to stomp on it or just use the magazine that’s sitting close at hand.

(What’s really happening is this: Under the conditions of the spell-potion, Crowley doesn’t meet the relevant criteria for getting killed. But he also sort of does. Aziraphale’s having the angel equivalent of Blue Screen of Death - don’t let Crowley go, because he might be a threat. But don’t kill him, because he might not be.

Crowley doesn’t know this, of course, because he’s busy fearing for his life.)

He gulps. Aziraphale’s head cocks to the side, but otherwise nothing happens. 

“Um.”

One of the many downsides to immortality is that time gets pretty darn wonky after the first few centuries. Sometimes a decade goes by in a blink of an eye, sometimes five minutes seems like five eons, and sometimes an hour is an hour. Crowley would be hard-pressed to tell when the last time was he knew the day without having to wander around for a newspaper (or, more recently, check the front of his smartphone. Humans are so damn inventive, honestly.)

In this case, his temporality issues culminate in Crowley being completely incapable of telling you how long he and Aziraphale just stared at each other, waiting for something to change. HIs terror at no point abates, so he couldn’t say why (What he would later find out was) hours later he finally decided that enough was enough.

Either Aziraphale will kill him or he won’t, and Crowley doesn’t have much control over what option wins. He may as well do something instead of staring at him like the many deer over the years have stared at his Bentley as they met their grisly fate. No matter how much a situation like this is geared to set off every prey instinct.

He lets out a short hiss from between his teeth to gird his loins, and then he’s off.

“So - I mean, it looks like you’re not going to kill me. Does that - am I off or does that track with you, angel?” Crowley hesitantly wriggles, trying to loosen Aziraphale’s grip. He frees one hand and makes a show of rolling it around to get feeling back. “Alright, one limb’s back. I can do a lot with one limb. I can do things like. Like.  Ah. Well, I could probably scroll through Facebook. Maybe. My hands aren’t quite wide enough with how phones are getting all big again - I wish I could take credit for that, I do, but nope.” The “p” pops loudly. “Nope, that’s just humans being humans. They get technology to the point of having phones as small as an infant’s hand, and then they go right back around and start making them brick-sized again. I don’t get it, angel, I really don’t.

“And this isn’t even getting into the ‘fablets’ - or would that be ‘phablets’ with a ‘ph’? That makes more sense. Now that I’m saying that out loud, that makes more sense. Because they’re tablet-sized phones, not fabulous phones. I think the only phones that could be fabulous phones are the Motorola Razer - every thirteen-year-old girl’s dream for awhile there, am I right? - and the ones that are shaped like burgers and sushi and stuff. And really - “

Crowley could’ve kept talking for quite awhile. He has, what the general populace would call, a Big Mouth. It grows exponentially as his stress levels rise.

As we’ve already established, Crowley is often stressed. As we have not already established, Crowley is immeasurably more stressed when Aziraphale is not around to fake being coolly casual for. It’s easy to be composed when someone else is there to be composed for, you see.

Lucky for him, Aziraphale takes pity on him as he so often does.

The angel, still stuck in the grip of madness, darts up and releases Crowley at the first sound of movement outside. He’s speedwalking unnaturally fast (Terminator-style? Readers, fact check me on this. It’s been awhile.) Crowley barely has time to get his feet under him and sprint after him before Aziraphale is gripping into the intruder.

“Aziraphale! Aziraphale, angel, hey, hey hey hey let’s put the man - or let’s kill him, okay, cool, I can work with this, this is perfectly fine and completely normal behavior and I can handle this and fix it I’m almost completely positive - “ He wheezes at the sound of bone crunching against bone. “Aziraphale that’s both horrible and horribly attractive, you can’t be doing this to me after six millennia of restraint you _goddamn_ numpty!“

Aziraphale doesn’t bother looking at him, too busy using his heel to crush such-and-such’s skull into a billion shards. He then proceeds to grind the larger bits to dust under his foot.

Crowley winces. That had been a rather unfortunate man, from what he could tell. He didn’t get a great look at them before Aziraphale was unleashing Heaven’s fury upon the unwitting victim, but it appeared to be someone about to partake in a clandestine rendezvous. In a full suit, carrying a briefcase - the implication being that someone else (or multiple someone elses) are likely on their way. Aziraphale’s heel makes another grinding motion - the implication being that anyone else who shows up will, in fact, meet the same end. 

He absentmindedly wonders how difficult it is to crush a skull while wearing fuzzy house slippers, and how bad Aziraphale’s feet will hurt after this all blows over.

When the “threat” is deemed fully eliminated, Aziraphale turns to face Crowley and stalks forward again. Crowley responds by backing up quickly, as he’s in no hurry to get trapped again.

It’s just his luck that his cell phone rings again. He fumbles to slip it out of his pocket while still staying out of Aziraphale’s reach. Whoever is on the other end helpfully keeps ringing him when he doesn’t answer in time. And then again.

Look. To be fair, Crowley wears very tight pants. And Aziraphale is silent but clearly very persistent in his endeavor, whatever it may be. Crowley does the best that he can with the circumstances at hand.

He picks up at last and barely dodges a pudgy hand (even covered in viscera and gore, Aziraphale has those hands that are tiny and cute as a goddamn button, Crowley thinks, which is not a very useful thought to have in this situation but is no less true for it), snarling, “Now’s not the best time, motherfu - “

“Hey Crowley! How’s it going with ‘Ziraphale?”

“Oh it’s just GREAT really just spectacular you know? Just spiffy, just dandy, really great, kid, it’s going GREAT - “

“Just because you’re mad doesn’t mean you gotta yell at me, y’know.”

“I’m busy trying not to get discorporated!”

“He wouldn’t discorporate you!” Adam exclaims - he sounds incredibly offended, which is odd considering he must know about Aziraphale’s gory rampage. “I really thought you’d have handled this by now, y’know. Like it’s pretty obvious what needs to be done. You’re kinda useless, aren’tcha?”

Crowley shrieks. It’s half from outrage at Adam’s bullshit and half from Aziraphale managing to get an arm around his neck and pull him back into his chest.

Adam sighs, loudly and exasperatedly. As if Crowley is the rowdy child and Adam is the cool mentor.

(Which, to be clear, is generally their relationship. Appearances aside, Adam is way more put together than Crowley, and Crowley is a mischievous jerk at best.)

Aziraphale’s arm is snug but not choking, thankfully. He holds Crowley close to him, and whatever moral quandary he must’ve had earlier when he kept staring at Crowley motionlessly is clearly over with, as he buries his face into Crowley’s neck. Crowley forces himself not to shiver, because he doesn’t really want to think about what a shiver would mean in this context.

“Crowley,” Adam says in the same tone he uses with Dog. The “Okay I Mean It This Time, You Better Listen To Me and No I Am Not Kidding” tone. With a normal thirteen-year-old, this wouldn’t matter very much, but he is the antichrist after all, and I can’t imagine that you, readers would be any less wary of this prepubescent teen. “You’ve seen a Disney movie, right?”

“Uh, probably?” He squeaks at Aziraphale’s nose poking behind his ear. “Princes, princesses, small animals that either talk or have eerily expressive faces, some vague anti-semitic sentiments - “ 

“Yeah, that. How do Disney movies get resolved?”

“Uh. Musical numbers?“

“True love’s kiss!” Adam says, exasperated. “You’re useless. You’re completely useless. How have you survived for six thousand years? Honestly.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You should be! I mean why wouldn’t you think to kiss your husband better? That’s the first thing mum does when dad’s sick and then she gets sick too and it’s really kind of gross but - “

“Husband?!”

He sighs. “Completely hopeless, you are. Don’t call me unless you fix this or you’re dead, ‘kay?" 

Crowley would like to call him a “rude little bugger,” but unfortunately Adam hangs up before he can berate the lad. He’s inordinately fond of the little shit, but right now, he’d really like to strangle him.

What nonsense, he thinks. True Love’s Kiss like a fucking children’s movie, he thinks. Ridiculously sentimental bull, he thinks.

He still turns in Aziraphale’s grip to eye him speculatively. He turns more so they’re facing each other, and he continues to speculate and think. Aziraphale’s arm is still around him, but now it’s positioned in a way that a particularly unobservant observer could argue they’re in an embrace

True Love’s Kiss, he thinks.

“It wouldn’t hurt to try,” He says out loud. “I’m sure even you couldn’t fault me for it, angel. I’m doing it selflessly, for you! To fix whatever’s happening here! Really, this is downright charitable. I’m doing the world a favor - we don’t want a rampaging Principality on the loose, now do we? Not after we went to all the trouble of saving the world and rebelling against our respective factions - really, Aziraphale, I owe it to you to at least try.”

Readers, in case it’s not obvious: Crowley is justifying this. It shouldn’t surprise you that he takes approximately three seconds after this convincing speech to say, “If you hate this - well, sorry,” before launching himself closer and gracelessly slipping Aziraphale some tongue.

**

 

Aziraphale comes to already weeping. He doesn’t have a blissful moment of ignorance where he doesn’t remember what occurred. He doesn’t have any lapse between Murderous Rampage Aziraphale and Oh So Guilty What Have I Done? Aziraphale.

Crowley’s lips touch his, a tongue slithers between his lips, and Aziraphale has ten seconds of enjoyment before the switch flicks and he’s crying. Were the situation any different, it would be comical how quickly Crowley yanks back and stares at him horrified.

“Sorry!” Crowley says very quickly. “I’m so sorry angel, I didn’t mean - “

“I didn’t mean to,” Aziraphale says at the same time, shoulders shaking. “Crowley, I - I massacred - “

“It’s not your fault! You were clearly under the influence of some - I don’t even know, I’ve never - It doesn’t matter!” He shakes his head and reaches forward to draw Aziraphale down to bury his head in Crowley’s shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not your fault. We both know you wouldn’t do something like this if you could help it.”

“I massacred a platoon of _people_ , of _humans_ , and I trapped you and then you kissed me and I feel absolutely wretched, oh Crowley, I feel horrendous that you had to do such a thing because I w-wasn’t - I can’t believe that I let this happen and you must think - I don’t know what you must think but it must be horrible and don’t - “ His distress somehow gets worse, even as Crowley pats his back and frantically tries to shush him. “Oh, this is all just a great big mess! And you kissed me!”

“Hey, the kiss - I did that for you!” Crowley says loudly, focusing on the completely wrong portion of the conversation. “I said I was sorry!”

“I know!” He wails. “You must abhor me - I look a fright, and Heaven’s going to expel me if they haven’t already done so, and I made you _kiss_ me to save me!”

“Er.” Crowley says. “Made me?”

“What else were you to do?” Aziraphale pulls back to look at him like he’s an absolute moron. “You were clearly fearing for your life and couldn’t think of anything else to do!”

“Er.” Crowley says. “Yes. Of course. That. Definitely that. I mean, I certainly didn’t do it because I wanted to or because I thought murderous fury was a rather dashing look on you. I certainly didn’t do it because I was afraid this would be my only chance to do so and have an out.”

Aziraphale blinks at him. Crowley smiles sheepishly.

“Oh.”

“Like I said, there’s an out here.”

“Do you - I mean. Oh.”

“We really don’t have to - “

“We most certainly do!” 

“We do?”

“Most certainly.”

“I see.” He pulls back and shoves his hands into his pockets. “So. Now what?”

It’s a good question. It’s one they keep coming back to, and it pops up in their relationship rather frequently. Post-meals, post-The Arrangement, post-Apocalypse - “Now what?" 

Sometimes the answer is: “Champagne?”

Once, it was, “I have plenty of space for you to sit here and read, angel, just sit your ass down.”

In this case, the answer is, “Now, well - A miracle isn’t going to clean me up nearly enough. So I would like to go home and take a long, hot bath - ”

“Completely understandable.”

“Perhaps have some tea with it - “

“Yes yes, of course, tea fixes everything.” 

“Perhaps have some. Company.” 

“With the tea - I love me some good chamomile, sure, of course - “

“Perhaps the bath as well?”

Try to picture “gobsmacked” mixed with “absolute elation,” and you may come within a stone’s throw of how Crowley looks at that request. This is an expression of another emotion that doesn’t quite have a word that fits it and is only applicable in very particular, specific situations. If we had to name it, a good approximation would be “After Six Millennia He Finally Is Picking Up What I’m Putting Down Holy Fucking Shit This Is Unreal Do Not Wake Me Up If This Is A Dream I Swear To Someone You Stupid Fuck I Can Die Happily In This Dream I Can and Will Stay In The Matrix Thanks.”

Now try to picture a sound that’s a cross between “ecstasy” and “a walrus’s death throes,” and you would have pretty much the exact noise Crowley made while making the aforementioned face.

It’s a very good thing that Aziraphale is just as madly in love with him, or else that noise would be a bit of a turn off. Instead, Aziraphale blushes lightly and smiles shyly, holding out a hand.

Despite the hand being covered in dead human innards, Crowley takes it with a reverence most often seen on pre-teen boys when their date to homecoming is impatiently waiting for them to tie their corsage on. He caresses it and stares at Aziraphale dopily, and Aziraphale somehow blushes red enough to be seen underneath the (copious amounts of) blood spattered across his face.

They walk out of the warehouse hand-in-hand, miracling the mess behind them away without a second thought.

(Unfortunately, they don’t manage to do so before Aziraphale’s last victim’s crew shows up and gets an eyeful. They miracle that away as well, but none of them sleep well for a few months.)

And after cleaning off the gore, and after a few cups of tea: They lived happily ever after.

**

Here is what Crowley and Aziraphale will never fully figure out:

  * _Aziraphale did not kill Crowley for a few reasons. The first is that his love for Crowley is in a much different category than the pansy, delicate love the spell was intended for. This leads into the second, which is that demons are very poor cooks and are even worst potion-makers. Therefore, their potion wasn’t strong enough to cover all types of love - just the love that a particularly affectionate angel has for the general populace._



_The third reason is that, even in his bloodthirsty haze, Aziraphale was more fascinated with Crowley and the emotions bubbling up underneath said haze that he was with squashing him. This was a good thing, for though there’s not a single universe where this went according to Orobas’s plan, it doesn’t mean that Aziraphale wasn’t already out of his mind when Crowley got there. It was chance and Aziraphale’s passionate, all-consuming adoration for his demon that ultimately snapped him out of the frenzy and into a comatose-esque state._

_And because of this, we don’t have to dwell on the nasty what-could-have-beens._

  * _Though it is a tragedy that Aziraphale killed quite a few people through events beyond his control, it was unfortunately for the best. Had Orobas and his sort-of-cult sort-of-club succeeded, they would have gone on to use this tactic to tear Heaven apart and take over Earth themselves._



_This means that Aziraphale and Crowley, unknowingly, inadvertently, actually stopped another End-of-the-World situation. It was much more directly thanks to their actions than the first Armageddon was (which, if we’re being honest, they didn’t really do much of anything for that one.)_

  * _Though it is a tragedy that Aziraphale killed quite a few people through events beyond his control, he was not torn up over the deaths. And this is not because he thought they deserved it, or because he somehow knew that it was an integral part of the Ineffable Plan. Though he loves humanity as a whole, it’s not as if angels had a very good education in respecting the fragility and individuality of life. They tend to have a “Ah, that’s unfortunate,” look at mass amounts of human death. Aziraphale is more empathetic than most angels, but that doesn’t amount to much at all._



_So no, Aziraphale did not cry for the people he killed, though he tries to convince himself that he is selfless enough to do so._

_Rather, he wept out of fear that God or Heaven would punish him for them. And he wept out of fear that Crowley would resent him for being so weak as to  need rescuing._

  * _Aziraphale comes back to himself not due to Crowley’s eternal love and his subsequent demonstration (With Tongue!), but instead due to the spell wearing off. They had, at that point, been in the warehouse for almost a full day. As mentioned above, the demons were not the most talented and the efficacy of the whole matter teetered off around hour eight. It was a mixture of luck and Adam playing matchmaker that brought about a very convenient timing._



_This series of events means that both Aziraphale and Crowley fall into a sickeningly sweet honeymoon phase for the next three decades, believing their love is stronger than anything that could possibly want to tear them apart. It’s sweet, but also one of the most annoying things in the history of existence. And I would know._

_**_

In the end, though True Love (kind of) triumphed I believe you, readers, will agree with me when I say (with feeling):

What idiots.


End file.
